


treaties and vows

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 12:17:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18660286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Princess Elena marries King Alphonso to unite their people.





	treaties and vows

Princess Elena isn’t thrilled with the fact that the day she meets her husband-to-be is their wedding day. The possibility of a political marriage - nay, the certainty of one - has been with her all her life, of course. But she has always thought there would be a longer betrothal.

But things get out of hand with a third kingdom being taken over by hostiles and the alliance has to be forged right away, with satin and lace and golden rings, with vows and blessings and a bedding.

Meanwhile other things are forged, too: armour and swords, arrowheads and chains. The people ready themselves for war.

Elena readies herself for a life alongside a man she knows little of. King Alphonso has taken the crown only a few moons ago; he is said to be smart and kind and generous, and lethal in a fight. He is said to be handsome, too.

She has heard only nice things about him but knows that no one would speak ill of the king even if that were the truth. She is relieved when she steps down the aisle and knows that at least one thing was not a lie: He is handsome, tall and broad-shouldered, and looks at her as if a weight just lifted of him as well. His eyes are warm and only dip below her face briefly. He blushes when she quirks an eyebrow and smirks, letting him know she caught the look.

So they weren’t lying about handsome, and she thinks there must be truth in talk of his kindness, too, by the softness in his eyes, by the way he cups her cheek when the priest tells them to seal their union with a kiss, by the way he laughs with knights and asks serving maids after their children by name, by the way he offers, softly, to postpone the consummation of their marriage until they know each other better, or at all.

“I would like to do my wifely duties,”she teases, because they have danced together and laughed together and he has looked at her lips again and again and she has wondered what his hand on her lower back would feel like without the garments between them.“If you’ll have me, husband?”

He needs no more to take her to their wedding bed and she learns, sweaty and breathless and gasping his name, that his generosity was not exaggerated either.

 

Sometimes she forgets that they are married for the sake of their peoples.

It’s hard to remember that he did not want her for a wife when he makes certain the cooks learn to use the spices she loves back home, when he wraps her in a second quilt because the nights here are so much colder, when he holds her hand as they look at the stars, and cries with happiness when she tells him she is with child, just three moons after she became his wife.

It is hard to remember war is what brought her here, when she nuzzles his cheek and is tickled by his beard, when she lets the little milk maids show her how the king built them a pulley system so they can open the heavy barn door themselves, when she sketches her husband as he’s bent over a book and sees in the charcoal lines that she’s fallen in love because they keep smudging where she can’t keep her fingers from caressing his cheek. He never complains when she goes to touch the real counterpart and gets charcoal on him, too.

She is queen now, and the alliance is keeping the enemy at bay. Her belly is swelling with their child and she forgets, more and more every day, that this is no love match.

It hits her all the harder when she sees him dip into a corridor and follows him, thinking his council meeting was over sooner, thinking to surprise him, and finds him disappearing into what she knows to be a servant’s quarters.

She hesitates for a moment, ice in her chest and heat in her stomach. She does not want to see what she thinks she will see but she throws the door open nonetheless.

Her husband is fully dressed and so is the servant girl but then, he only just arrived.

“Elena,”he says, surprised and abashed, but not sorry as far as she can tell.

She wants to say something but she doesn’t know what. She wants to cry, too, but not in front of him and his little mistress. She swallows, steps back when he reaches for her and says,“Don’t let me interrupt you.”

She turns to leave when the servant girl hurriedly speaks.“You must tell her, your highness. No more surprise.”

It isn’t the words that stop her so much as the language. She has only spoken in her mother tongue with her own handmaidens since arriving.

The serving girl pushes past her, mumbling apologies and blushing furiously, and then she is alone with her husband.

“I wanted to learn,”he says, slow and stilted but in the language of her home.“For you and for the babe. To surprise you. Kiara’s mother is from your kingdom. She teaches me.”

“Oh.” She feels the tears sting at her eyes still. But it’s affection bringing them now, perhaps with a bit of embarrassment.“I can teach you, husband. Now that I’ve ruined the surprise.” She sniffles.“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.” He pulls her into his arms and kisses her tears from her cheeks.“I should apologise. If you could think I would betray and shame you, I have failed to make clear my love for you.”

“I love you, too,”she whispers back.

 

By the time their son is born, the threat of war is allayed with another treaty and Elena almost wants to thank the foreign emperor.

It was his warmongering, after all, that forced them into what turned out to be the greatest gift of their lives.


End file.
